Delicious Summer Rolls!

Sometime I just don’t want to cook a large meal. I want something that’s filling and doesn't take forever! This dish I love, because it’s so simple, filling, and fun to make. This is an item that can be made into a meal or also makes a great appetizer for guests. I enjoy making these in the summer, because all the ingredients are fresh and in season. The sauce compliments really nicely with it too. You don’t have to use this sauce; you can also make your own or just eat them as is. Also you can be creative and make them just vegetables, or with chicken, shrimp, crab, whatever you want.

Prep: 5 min                                 Cooking time: 10 min

Serving: 1-2 (Depends on quantity made)    Calories: Sauce 170

                                                                     Rolls 436

*Note: Calories can change depending on what form of protein you add into rolls.

Gluten Free and Dairy Free

Ingredients:

¼ Cucumber (once julienned makes about ½-3/4 cups)

1 carrot (once julienned makes about ½-3/4 cup)

½ Avocado

Rice noodles (once heated should make about 1 cup – 1 ½ cup)

3 sheets of Spring wrappers (rice paper)

½ Cooked chicken breast Shredded

Sauce:

1 Tablespoon of chunky peanut butter

1 Tablespoon of Srirarcha (more if you want spicier)

1 Teaspoon of low sodium soy sauce (Gluten free soy sauce can be used)

1 Teaspoon of minced or dry ginger

¼ teaspoon of Sesame oil

4 oz of water

Preparation:

1. First thing you want to follow the instructions on how to do your rice noodles. Usually you want to place them in hot water for 10 minutes.

2. With a Julianne tool or knife.  Julianne cucumbers and carrot.

3. Slice avocado into five slices.

4. Have a bowl of hot water and for 10 to 15 seconds then pull it and place on your cutting board.

5. First place noodles on center of rice paper, a little golf ball worth

6. Place 1/3 of carrots of carrots, cucumber, and avocado on top

7. Add 1/3 of chicken on top

8. Fold in sides, then wrap like around tight. Like a burrito.

9. Repeat until all are done. You can cut in half for appetizers

Sauce:

1. Mix in Peanut butter, sesame oil, soy sauce, sriracha, ginger and water. Mix well until becomes thick like a sauce. If too thick add more water. If you want spicier add more sriracha or red chili flakes.

It’s that simple! You’re done and I hope you enjoy!

From my kitchen to yours, enjoy!   

What are you Eating?! Fun health facts about Spinach and Asparagus.

Last week I posted a meal with two ingredients. Those ingredients were asparagus and spinach, why am I typing about those ingredients? The reason why is I think it is great if you know the benefits of the items in your diet. When you’re “dieting” you’re trying to load your body with many nutrients. I say “dieting” because, you shouldn’t think about it as a diet. Think of this is a lifestyle change. Your body is like a temple, it needs to be cleaned and cared for to keep it looking amazing. The way you do that, is by loading your body with healthy items. Stuff that come from earth and not processed or has additives. A clean eating diet is the best way to help keep your body cared for and clean. So let’s start with the two of the ingredients that I added Asparagus and spinach.

Asparagus

This is a great Vegetable! 

Asparagus is known to have a large amount of vitamins A, C, E, and K, with a little bit of minerals as folate, iron, chromium, potassium, and manganese. Also it contains fiber and protein. Vitamin K in asparagus plays a key role, this is excellent for healthy blood clotting and strengthen your bones. Vitamin A helps with bettering your vision.  Some of the nutrients help to keep your heart healthy. It has trace amounts of minerals that help boost your immunity system.  With the mixture of B vitamins, fiber, and anti-inflammatory compounds can help prevent in heart disease. These also can help lower your risk of obtaining type-2 diabetes.

Potassium is good in helping your kidney function regularly. This also can help prevent the kidneys from forming kidney stones. Amino acids are found in asparagus as well.  Amino acid is a natural diuretic. This helps increase urination, which doesn’t only allow fluid release, but helps rid the body of excess salts.

It contains an antioxidant glutathione, which is known to attract toxins and free radicals to it. Then once they are attached to the glutathione it carries the toxins and free radicals out of the body. It also contains many other antioxidants such as beta-carotene and selenium. This vegetable contains high levels of anti-inflammatory compounds.

This nifty vegetable also contains inulin. The thing makes inulin so special, this compound stays undigested until it travels into the large intestine. When it gets in the large intestine it helps absorb nutrients in there and also cuts the chances of colon cancer.

Spinach

Mom has always told you to eat your spinach, because just like Popeye it will make you strong. Little did she know what many other great things spinach can do for you! 

Spinach has an abundant of vitamins as well. It also contains Vitamin A, C, E and K, it also has Beta-Carotenoids. As said before Vitamin A helps protect, maintain and can strengthen the health of your eyes. Vitamin A also helps reduce free radicals in the body. Vitamin K again can help blood clotting and bone health. This is very good for those who are trying to better your body as well working out. An added bonus is Vitamin C, which is an increase in antioxidants and even help in anti-aging. This is great on helping you looking younger! With having beta-carotenoids, vitamin E, Lutein and Vitamin C this gives spinach large amounts of antioxidants. This is crazy! 

Not many vegetables have this amount of nutrients in just one, this is very rare.

Speaking of antioxidants, researchers have found 13 different flavonoid compounds. This is great because these guys serve as antioxidants and anti-cancer agents. This can help prevent different forms of cancer in the body. Spinach is rich in Lutein, this can help prevent cataracts and age related macular degeneration. This is one of the main things that can help prevent blindness in people aging and elderly. Hypertension prevention is another valuable trait of spinach. Spinach contains one of the 4 principal nutrients, this can play critical role to keep the balance of Na-K (Sodium and Potassium) pump by lowering the potassium in the body.

Spinach can help improve learning capacity and motor skills in the brain. This is a good vegetable to eat, especially for students for those long study session times. Most times you can get stressed while studying for exams. Well not only can this help strengthen your study skills, but spinach can also relax your body. The source that helps relax the body is Magnesium and replenishes all the lost energy within seconds. Fatigue is caused magnesium deficiency and spinach can easily take care of this. So this can help you stay alert and feel replenished. No wonder why Popeye loved spinach so much!

Who knew that just these two vegetables where so amazing! And these are just two of the many fruits of vegetables that are out there. So stay tuned as I keep adding more information of all the yummy food out there. Hopefully these facts can help with your diet.

From my kitchen to yours, Enjoy! 

Summer Garden Sautee Chicken

Summer Garden Saute Chicken

During the summer time, I tend to enjoy light refreshing meals. I like to take advantage of the produce that is current in season. This dish is so light, refreshing and so simple to make. As you indulge you can imagine yourself outside of farm, at a picnic table watching fire flies and the sunset. This is a dish that took a little experimenting and a little fun! You get so much flavor forming on your pallet. You get a little acidic from the apple vinegar and sweetness from the honey and fruit. Both complementing each other very nicely.  

Prep time: 10 min.                                Cook Time: 20 min

Servings: 1                                            Calories: 529

Gluten Free

Dairy Free

Ingredients

1 – 6 ounce Chicken boneless skinless breast

½ cup of uncooked Quinoa

1 ¼ cups of Fresh Spinach

5-6 Medium Asparagus Stalks

1 Tablespoon Mint minced

1 Tablespoon Honey

1 ½ Tablespoon Craisins

2 Tablespoon of Olive Oil

2 oz Apple Cider

Preperation:

1.  Get chicken breast and cut into ½” - ¾” cubes.

2.  Place a saute pan on medium heat. Add Olive Oil and Asparagus, allow to slowly saute. Keep checking to make sure it doesn’t burn.

3. While asparagus is working in the pan. Grab a small pan and place it on medium-low heat.

4. In the small pan add apple cider, honey, mint, craisains, dried apricots, and pecans. Allow to slowly come to a slight boil.

5. Start your quinoa, follow directions on package on how to cook.

6. While the sauce is heating up and quinoa is cooking, add cubed chicken to asparagus.

7. As the sauce comes to a boil put on simmer to keep warm and make sure to stir around so craisins and apricots don’t burn and caramelize. (If the apple cider gets a little too low add another ounce) 

8. When the chicken browns and is cooked, pour the sauce onto chicken and asparagus.

9. Add spinach to mixture and mix around. Allow to lightly saute, but not to get to wilted.

10. Put chicken mixture to the side off the stove while quinoa finishes.

11. When the quinoa finishes, measure ¼ cup of quinoa on a plate. Then add chicken mixture on top. That is all you need to do.

From my kitchen to yours, enjoy! 

This Weeks Update

Hi everyone! I hope everyone had a great weekend and great start to your week. Maybe you got to check out my first recipe and try it out. If you have any questions in regards to the recipes please let me know. I will try to get back to you as soon as I can. I will be posting two times a week, which one day will have a recipe and another day will be health tips, ideas, or food knowledge trivia. Hopefully these can help with your dieting and help you to make your own fun recipes to share. I will most likely be posting beginning of the week and mid-week. Another great thing is for me to keep going I can always use ideas. If you have a favorite food that is not healthy for you, but you want a just as tasty healthier version, let me know. This will help me find more creative ideas on making such delicious foods!  

Healthy Orange Chicken

One of my favorite foods of all time is Orange Chicken. But have you ever seen the nutritional information that most places offer this dish?! It's crazy how bad it is for you. The sodium is high, the sugar is intense, there are tons of added preservatives and additives that are just bad for you. Even though it tastes amazing, really there isn't anything healthy about it. So my first challenge was to make a healthier clean version. This is what I came up with. So far it's been a hit with those that have tried it. This is a clean, gluten free (depending what soy sauce you use), no additives, no preservatives, made with natural sugar version of orange Chicken.

Healthy Orange Chicken

Prep time: 2 hours – 1 day                         Cook time: 45 min

Servings: 2                                                   Calories: 570 per serving

Ingredients:

2- 6 ounce Chicken boneless skinless breast cut cubed (organic if possible)

4 – Medium sized oranges fresh squeezed (should make 1 2/3 – 1 ¾ cups)

1 cup of fresh steamed brown rice

3 cups of broccoli

2 cups of sliced carrots

2 cups of snow peas

1 ½ cup of bean sprouts

½ cup of diced green onions.

1 cup of sliced mushrooms

Half can of 12oz frozen concentrated Orange Juice

2 teaspoon of fresh ginger (fresh minced preferred), dry is ok too. 1tsp will be used for marinade

3 teaspoon of fresh garlic (minced) 1½ tsp will be used for marinade

1 ½ tablespoon of crushed red peppers

1 tablespoon of honey

¼ teaspoon of black pepper

¾ teaspoon of sesame seem oil

1 ½ teaspoon of low sodium soy sauce ( or gluten free soy sauce)

1 pinch of pink sea salt

Sesame seeds.

Dash of Cayenne pepper for kick.  

Preparation:

1.  Get chicken breast and cut into ½” - ¾” cubes.

2.  In a medium sized bowl mix fresh squeezed orange juice, honey, garlic as listed, ginger as listed, dash of black pepper and dash of salt.

3. Add diced chicken into marinade and make sure marinade is covering the chicken. If not fully covered add a little more orange juice. Let set in marinade for 2 hours or up to a whole day. The longer the better.

4. When ready to start meal, start making the sauce. Before making sauce, start rice, follow directions for cooking rice. In a small sauce pan place half can of the frozen orange juice concentrate. Place pan over burner on light-medium heat closer to medium. Once juice starts to melt watch and let come to a light boil. Make sure to stir frequently, the sugars will start to thicken and caramelize and cause it to burn.

5. When sauce becomes thick, a syrup like consistancy, turn the stove to simmer and add the following ingredients; garlic, soy sauce, sesame seed oil, cayenne pepper, crushed red peppers, salt, pepper, and ginger. Mix well, taste for flavor. If desired, add more soy sauce or sesame oil for flavor. If desired more spicy, add more crushed red pepper or cayenne pepper.

6. While sauce and rice are cooking, start to steam broccoli, carrots, snow peas. You can either steam your own mixture, or in the fresh produce you can buy bags of pre-mixed fresh veggies and put the bags in the microwave to steam them.

7. In a large skillet over medium-high, you’re going to start to sauté your chicken. Don’t worry about adding marinade to the chicken. While cooking the chicken, it will sweat out the marinade and begin to caramelize the chicken. The chicken should take about 10-15 minutes to fully cook through depending on the kind of stove you have. When chicken is close to finish, add mushrooms to lightly sauté.

8. Once chicken is done cooking, pour sauce over chicken and toss together.

9. On a plate, add ¼ cup of cooked rice and plate veggies and bean sprouts over rice. When done, add chicken mix over veggies and rice. Lightly sprinkle green onions and sesame seeds over dish.

Enjoy!  Please leave comments on what you think of this dish or if you have an questions. 

Here we go!

Welcome to the beginning.

Hello everyone and welcome to my page. This page is intended for those who are trying to live a healthier lifestyle and looking for tips or even clean recipes.  I will be posting recipes that I develop, with nutritional information. These are clean recipes that are either gluten free, dairy free, all natural, or all three. I also will be looking for new ideas as well! If there is a favorite food of yours and its unhealthy, let me know. I will do the best to develop something just as similar to what the food you are, but a healthy version. As well if you have any concerns about any of the recipes please let me know. I will do my best to try to find alternatives if you can't do a certain ingredient. So welcome and I hope you enjoy this journey. 

Matt